Seventeenth Sunday of the Year

Mass Celebrated By Archbishop Denis Hart
at Saint Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne,
on Sunday, 25th July, 2004, at 11.00am

Introduction

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

“Lord, teach us to pray.”

Today as we come to the great prayer of the Mass the Church invites us to see the importance of prayer in our lives as the lifeblood of our spirit.

God is a protector who makes everything holy and strong, guiding us to everlasting life. We depend upon him for everything. We pray to him and receive the fond answer, “Ask and it will be given you.”

As we call to mind our sins, let us remember that prayer is converse with our loving Father, as we examine ourselves on how we do live close to him.

Homily

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

An American theologian once said, “For many prayer is like a foreign land. When we go there, we go as tourists. Like most tourists we feel uncomfortable and out of place and because of that we move on before long and go somewhere else."

Yet the Readings today show us of a persistence in asking God, an invitation to pray in the terms of the Our Father, to be able to call God, ‘Daddy’, ‘Abba’, ‘Father’, as Jesus had done, sharing with his apostles intimate secrets of his union with God the Father.

Prayer defines our relationship with God and as we become more aware of him it is truly the life of the new heart, strengthening us at every moment. But we do tend to forget him. Saint Gregory said, “We must remember God more often than we draw breath.” But we cannot pray at all times if we do not pray at specific times, consciously willing it.

The Church gives us the morning and evening prayer, grace before and after meals, the Eucharist, the Rosary, other forms of prayer. In our tradition there are three major expressions of prayer; vocal prayer, meditation and contemplative prayer.

Vocal prayer is essential to our Christian life. Jesus in today’s Gospel teaches us to pray the Our Father and he not only prayed the prayers of the synagogue, but also he raised his voice to express his personal petitions. Vocal prayer joins our voice and our body, sometimes with others, as we gradually become aware of the one to whom we speak and adore, love, thank, ask and make reparation. It is a conversation to which God readily listens.

Meditation on what we read, a text of Scripture, brings us to confront face to face ourselves and the Lord’s words and deeds. Christian prayer tries above all, the Catechism tells us, to meditate on the mysteries of Christ as in continuous reading or the Rosary, which is tremendously valuable. Christian prayer should, however, go forward to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him.

It was Saint Teresa who said that “Contemplative prayer is nothing else than a close sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with him whom we know loves us. We gather up the heart and recollect our whole being under the prompting of the Holy Spirit and stay dwelling with the Lord. It is a gift that can only be accepted in realisation of our poverty, with a gaze of faith fixed on Jesus, listening to him in silence. We become one with Christ’s own prayer sharing in his mystery.”

Various others have gathered all kinds of prayer together and described it as, ‘the humble answer to the inconceivable surprise of being alive’, or in times of crisis, ‘like the strap we grab hold of when tottering on a rushing tram or train that seems on the verge of turning over’, or again, ‘do not forget prayer – every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be a new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage and you will understand that prayer is an education’.

Or the Dutch author, Henri Nouwen, says, because we pray “We can carry in our heart all human pain and sorrow, all conflicts and agonies, all torture and war, all hunger, loneliness and misery, not because of some great capacity on our part, but because God’s heart has become one with ours.” So we pray, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by your name, your kingdom come …’

+ Denis J. Hart,
Archbishop of Melbourne.